Demystifying the REST API

Are you confused by REST APIs? Can't tell a PUT from a POST? No idea what a non-idempotent operation is? Despite their ubiquity, the details of what makes an API RESTful are often lost even on experienced developers. We'll cover the basics of the HTTP protocol that drives most REST services, break down the lingo, and clear up some misconceptions about this powerful and popular methodology.

9.
-Roy Fielding, REST Discussion Mailing List
“[T]he goal of my dissertation is to teach people how
to think about the problem in terms of trade-offs, not
in terms of rigid repetition…”

10.
Nothing is more easy than to reduce this mass to one
quarter of its bulk. You know that curious cellular
matter which constitutes the elementary tissues of
vegetable? This substance is found quite pure in many
bodies, especially in cotton, which is nothing more than
the down of the seeds of the cotton plant. Now cotton,
combined with cold nitric acid, become transformed into
a substance eminently insoluble, combustible, and
explosive. It was first discovered in 1832, by Braconnot, a
French chemist, who called it xyloidine. In 1838 another
Frenchman, Pelouze, investigated its different properties,
and finally, in 1846, Schonbein, professor of chemistry at
Bale, proposed its employment for purposes of war. This
powder, now called pyroxyle, or fulminating cotton, is
prepared with great facility by simply plunging cotton
for fifteen minutes in nitric acid, then washing it in
water, then drying it, and it is ready for use.

11.
Nothing is more easy than to reduce this mass to one
quarter of its bulk. You know that curious cellular
matter which constitutes the elementary tissues of
vegetable? This substance is found quite pure in many
bodies, especially in cotton, which is nothing more than
the down of the seeds of the cotton plant. Now cotton,
combined with cold nitric acid, become transformed into
a substance eminently insoluble, combustible, and
explosive. It was first discovered in 1832, by Braconnot, a
French chemist, who called it xyloidine. In 1838 another
Frenchman, Pelouze, investigated its different properties,
and finally, in 1846, Schonbein, professor of chemistry at
Bale, proposed its employment for purposes of war. This
powder, now called pyroxyle, or fulminating cotton, is
prepared with great facility by simply plunging cotton
for fifteen minutes in nitric acid, then washing it in
water, then drying it, and it is ready for use.